Flathead Lake and Shrimp

FAOL Community Conservation
1

Interesting article on Flathead Lake in today’s Missoulian. Follow the link.

http://missoulian.com/news/local/article_77afb480-2137-11e0-b13d-001cc4c002e0.html

2

John,

Thanks for the link; very sad story unless your into trolling for macks with a T60 Flatfish. If I remember correctly the decision to introduce mysis shrimp originally was based on observations made at a lake in (I think) British Columbia where the shrimp moved to the top of the water column during the day, making them available to fish like cutthroats/kokanee. What the folks didn’t realize was that this lake was the exception to the norm, and mysis usually stayed deep during the day (where the lakers can get to them), and came up at night, when the cutts/kokes didn’t feed.
Trying to make the best of a bad situation, there was talk of farming the mysis (just like Forrest Gump) but that idea never went anywhere; it’d take about 500 of them to fill a shrimp cocktail dish and who’d want to peel the little buggers, anyway?
I was lucky enough to see the tail end of a kokanee run in the late 80’s up by Apgar in GNP; about 20 bald eagles in/around McDonald Creek; pretty cool.

Regards,
Scott

3

Indeed it was cool - JC and I lived on Flathead Lake at the time and went up the GNP to see the gathering of eagles. Terrific. We were still there when the Kokanee “disappeared” they were still trying to figure out what happened. Was a tragedy.

4

Anyone know why Flathead was an exception? any way of predicting before introduction?

5

Flathead wasn’t an exception, the shrimp, usually photosensitive, stay deep there during the daytime and come up at night; lakers, deep dwellers, feed on them and anything else they can get their fins on (see Yellowstone Lake). Unfortunately (for the kokes and cutts) the decision to introduce mysis shrimp into Whitefish, Seely and Swan Lake (and by default Flathead which these lakes flow into) in Montana was based on observations from a very small and skewed sample in Canada where kokanee salmon experienced, initially, a surge in size and numbers after the mysis were introduced, but then crashed as the shrimp began to compete with salmon fry for food. Mysis shrimp are beneficial to trout populations in a number of tailwater streams like the Frying Pan and Taylor Rivers in Colorado, where they get flushed out of the reservoirs and turn the water immediately below the dams into feeding troughs; some very large fish reside there.

Regards,
Scott